BRUMAL DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5565/rev/brumal.

84
Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico
Research Journal on the Fantastic Vol. II, n.° 1 (primavera / spring), pp. 89-106, ISSN: 2014–7910

FROM BID TIME RETURN TO

SOMEWHERE IN TIME: MATHESON AS
ADAPTER, ADAPTATION
AS TRANSFORMATION, AND THE
PERKS OF INFIDELITY
Ben Kooyman
University of South Australia
Ben.Kooyman@unisa.edu.au

Recibido: 15-12-2013
Aceptado: 16-04-2014

Resumen

Este ensayo examina la adaptación cinematográfica de la novela de ciencia ficción Bid

Time Return (1975) de Richard Matheson. La película se titula Somewhere in Time (1980),
con guión de Matheson, dirigida por Jeannot Szwarc y protagonizada por Christopher
Reeve y Jane Seymour. Si bien Bid Time Return obtuvo el World Fantasy Award, mu-
chos de los lectores de Matheson, como el mismo autor ha indicado, pensaron que no
era su mejor obra, y ni la novela ni su adaptación cinematográfica tuvieron éxito co-
mercial. Sin embargo, tanto el texto literario como la película cuentan con seguidores
fieles. Somewhere in Time incluso ha generado su propio club de fans: la International
Network of Somewhere in Time Enthusiasts. Además esta película es digna de atención
como transformación crítica del texto original.

Palabras clave: Richard Matheson, Bid Time Return, Somewhere in Time, adaptación.

Abstract

This essay closely examines the adaptation of Richard Matheson’s science-fiction ro-
mance novel Bid Time Return (1975) into the film Somewhere in Time (1980), scripted
by Matheson, directed by Jeannot Szwarc, and starring Christopher Reeve and Jane
Seymour in the lead roles. Whilst Bid Time Return was awarded the World Fantasy
Award, many of Matheson’s loyal readers, as the author has noted, found the novel
«soft», and neither it nor its film adaptation were commercially successful. However,
both novel and film have developed loyal followings, with Somewhere in Time even
spawning its own fan club, the International Network of Somewhere in Time Enthu­

89
 Ben Kooyman

siasts. In addition, the film is noteworthy as a critical transformation of its own

source text.

Keywords: Richard Matheson, Bid Time Return, Somewhere in Time, Adaptation

R
The intentions of this essay are twofold. Firstly, through close com-
parison of novel and film side by side, this essay illustrates how Matheson has
translated his story to screen, tailoring it to the strengths and assets of the film
medium.1 Matthew R. Bradley (2010: 7) dubs Matheson «[…] one of the most
prolific screenwriters to come from a literary background… able to bring his
own work to the screen with an unusual frequency.» Few authors have been
as well-suited to adapting their own source texts to film and television as
Matheson: his prolific work as both original screenwriter and adapter of
source material, both his own and others, clearly gave him insight into the
distinct strengths of each medium, how to tweak texts from one medium to
the next, and how to translate the narrative incidents and spirit of a text while
changing or jettisoning attributes that are not so easily transferable.2 Some-

1  Because Matheson’s screenplay for Somewhere in Time is not readily available in complete form – the
script is available online (see Matheson, 1980b), but that document contains only about 75% of the fin-
ished screenplay, with segments of the script essential to my analysis not included – I have elected to
use the finished film as my point of comparison to Matheson’s novel rather than this incomplete version
of the script. While I recognise that film authorship is collaborative and multi-faceted, and do not wish
to perpetuate Matheson as sole auteur of Somewhere in Time, I believe this close equation of script with
finished product is justified in two key respects: the finished film is a very faithful translation of the
aforementioned script to screen, and Matheson was closely involved with the production of the film,
noting it was «[…] the only time I had ever been asked» to attend production (qtd. in Bradley, 2010: 221).
Having said that, since my point of reference is the finished film I will, where relevant, extend my dis-
cussion to consider Szwarc’s cinematic translation of the text, John Barry’s musical score, the actors’
performances, and so on.
2  Among the most notable adaptations of his own work that Matheson helped steer to the screen
– whether as sole or contributing screenwriter – are The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957, his screenwriting
debut based on The Shrinking Man, 1956), The Last Man on Earth (1964, based on I Am Legend, 1954), The
Legend of Hell House (1973, based on Hell House, 1971), and two versions of his short story «Nightmare at
20,000 Feet» (1961). These two short story adaptations, for television and film respectively, provide an
illuminating case study of Matheson’s savvy as adapter of his own work. The short story is driven by
the neurotic thought processes of protagonist Bob Wilson as he is taunted by a gremlin outside his aero-
plane window. For its 1963 adaptation for television as an episode of The Twilight Zone, helmed by
Richard Donner, Matheson gives the story’s protagonist a travelling companion to help manage the
flow of information and exposition. In its subsequent adaptation for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), this
exposition is trimmed and the segment is tailored to the more aggressively cinematic and visceral ap-
proach of director George Miller. Each new version of the story further reduces the interiority and ex-

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

where in Time is testament to this skill set, and this essay builds upon works like
Bradley’s in promoting interest in and scholarship on Matheson as screenwriter.
Secondly, through close analysis of the film’s most significant devia-
tion from its source text, namely its denouement, this essay characterises
Somewhere in Time as a critical «transformation» – to borrow a term increasing­
ly employed in adaptation studies (e.g. Frus & Williams, 2010; Stam, 2005a)
– of its literary precursor. While superficially a faithful adaptation of Mathe-
son’s romantic weepie, this fundamental difference between book and film
marks Somewhere in Time as a tonal and ideological re-interpretation of its
source. In illuminating and endorsing this transformation, this essay joins the
chorus of adaptation scholars and commentators from the past decade (e.g.
Hutcheon, 2006; Kooyman, 2013; Leitch, 2008; MacFarlane, 2007; Sanders,
2006) who have argued that fidelity cease being the lynchpin of discourse sur-
rounding adaptation, and posits Somewhere in Time as an exemplary case of
Robert Stam’s belief that «The shift from a single-track verbal medium such as
the novel to a multi-track medium like film, which can play not only with
words (written and spoken) but also with music, sound effects, and moving
photographic images, explains the unlikelihood, and I would suggest even
the undesirability, of literal fidelity» (Stam, 2005b: 4).

Present

Bid Time Return is framed by Matheson as a posthumously published

manuscript, written by narrator Richard Collier as a record of his journey
through time. This manuscript is preceded by an opening note (and bookended
with a postscript) by Collier’s surviving brother Robert, who inherited and
chose to publish the document.3 Due to the inclusion of this opening note,
readers of Bid Time Return know from the outset that the narrator of the work
is deceased, which casts a shadow of inevitable tragedy over the book. Moreo-
ver, Robert’s opening remarks generate ambivalence about the authenticity of
the manuscript that follows, though he contends that «[t]o Richard, this was
not a work of fiction» (Matheson, 1980a: 11–12).

position of the source material for their increasingly visual mediums, whilst preserving the story’s sense
of escalating dread and paranoia.
3  This is not Matheson’s only novel to use such a framing device: his subsequent novel, What Dreams
May Come (1978), employs a similar conceit. That book is narrated, or more precisely dictated, from be-
yond the grave by its author Chris Nielsen, who recounts his otherworldly exploits. A psychic records
Nielsen’s narration and delivers the manuscript to Chris’s brother, also named Robert, who likewise
tends to its publication.

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 Ben Kooyman

The novel proper begins in diary format in November 1971. Collier is

on a road trip from Los Angeles to San Diego, his destination decided via coin
toss. The journey is recounted in short, sharp snippets of prose, some dictated
into a cassette recorder, predominantly in present tense but with occasional
passages of past tense. Though the first few pages mainly record Collier’s
impressions of his journey, we also learn he is a television writer in his 30s
with a brain tumour and a short time to live. He also confesses «I never met a
woman I could love» (Matheson, 1980a: 16), establishing his initial emotional
aloofness. This soon changes when Collier winds up at Hotel de Coronado,
where he discovers «[…] the most gloriously lovely face I’ve ever seen in my
life» (37). He is referring to a 75-year old photograph of stage actress Elise
McKenna, which he discovers when perusing an exhibit at the hotel. He be-
comes enthralled with this picture, and in the pages that follow the brittle,
glib tone of the book’s earlier shotgun narration shifts into longer passages
marked by an increasingly haunted, obsessive tone.
Collier conducts research on McKenna and chronicles his findings in
detail, recounting her career and life as well as his own evolving impressions
of her. He is struck by a number of contradictions as well as coincidences, in-
cluding their shared affinity for Mahler (which becomes Rachmaninoff in the
film) and the fact they once attended the same party.4 As a novelist and short
story writer, one of Matheson’s greatest assets is his ability to illuminate the
interior life of his characters, and here he paints a vivid portrait of Collier’s
intellectual cogs and screws turning as he processes this information. This is
accentuated by the fact that Collier himself is a writer narrating his actions
and impressions; hence the prose is invested with additional flair for phras-
ing. Collier then investigates time travel. Annotations by Robert indicate that
large chunks of theory and text have been eliminated from this section of the
manuscript, but the theoretical information relating specifically to Collier’s
impending journey remains. Following this research, Collier embarks on his
journey, removing the accoutrements and trappings of the present and will-
ing himself through self-hypnosis and deep contemplation to November 1896.
At this point it is worth turning to Somewhere in Time to discuss how the
narrative incidents recounted thus far are translated to screen. Perhaps the
biggest challenge for any adapter of Bid Time Return would be finding cine-
matic equivalence for the interiority of the book’s narration. This challenge is
by no means unique to Bid Time Return. Linda Hutcheon (2006: 56) notes,

4  Rachmaninoff’s music also features prominently in Brief Encounter (1945), another romantic classic.

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

though does not endorse, the cliché that «[…] literary fiction, with its visualis-
ing, conceptualising, and intellectualised apprehension, “does” interiority best;
the performing arts, with their physical immersion, are more suited to repre-
senting exteriority.» Or, as Pauline Kael more succinctly puts it, «[m]ovies are
good at action; they’re not good at reflective thought or conceptual thinking»
(qtd. in Hutcheon, 2006: 57). Many film adaptations of novels or short stories
have had to grapple with this fundamental (if reductive) difference between
mediums. Yet it poses a particular challenge for adapters of Matheson’s pu­
blished work, including Matheson himself. One of his literary specialties is
crafting everyman characters pushed to their wit’s end – or «[…] individual[s]
isolated in a threatening world, attempting to survive», as Matheson himself
describes it (qtd. in Bradley, 2010: 6) – and, as indicated earlier, illuminating
their inner life. Stephen King (1981: 322), one of the author’s most notable
admirers, asserts that «[p]erhaps above all else, Matheson excels at the depic-
tion of one man alone, locked in a desperate struggle against a force bigger
than himself.» King is talking specifically about Matheson’s novel The Shrinking
Man (1956) and its protagonist Scott Carey’s adversarial relationship with a
predatory spider, yet he could easily be talking about Richard Collier falling
for a woman from a bygone era, embarking on an impossible journey to meet
her, and skirting repeatedly with failure.5 Whether writing in first person (Bid
Time Return) or third person (The Shrinking Man), Matheson furnishes his
characters with vivid interior monologues and showcases their thought pro-
cesses, anxieties, and neuroses in detail. This quality, as well as the everyman
vintage of his characters – which makes their unravelling on the page so com-
pelling – has proven difficult to translate to film. In adapting Bid Time Return
for film, Matheson finds a satisfactory middle ground between the interiority
of his novel and the expected exteriority of the film medium. Much of this is
accomplished through shifting the novel’s focus on telling the reader – some-
times to the point of grating – to showing the audience. Collier no longer nar-
rates his story in first person, but rather we watch it unfold in standard cine-
matic third person. Exposition is trimmed and actions function in place of
explanations.
Another strategy is recalibrating the narrative so that viewers are not
attached solely to Collier for the duration of the story. He remains the focal

5  He could also just as easily be talking about Robert Neville’s quest to survive a world populated by
vampires in I Am Legend, David Cooper’s struggle with the sex-crazed spirit who possesses his wife in
Earthbound (1982), the taunted Bob Wilson of «Nightmare at 20,000 Feet» and any number of desperate,
neurotic Matheson protagonists.

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 Ben Kooyman

point for the film’s majority, but is not present in every moment as he is in the
novel. This shift in focus is signalled in the opening scene, an invention for the
film, where we meet the senior McKenna in the present. The film’s Collier is a
playwright, and the story opens with the debut performance of his first play
Too Much Spring. Collier is toasting his success at the after-party when an el-
derly woman, who we later discover is McKenna, approaches him through
the crowd, presses a pocket watch into his hand, and urges him to «[c]ome
back to me.» She leaves the party, returns to her room at the Grand Hotel in
Michigan (replacing the novel’s Hotel de Coronado), listens to Rachmaninoff,
and later that evening (as we discover later) dies. In addition to providing an
intriguing entry point into the story, this scene also provides the character of
McKenna with a greater level of agency: she is not merely the passive object
of Collier’s visit to the past, but is instrumental in facilitating his visit.
The film segues from McKenna listening to Rachmaninoff on her final
evening to Richard listening to the same music in his apartment eight years
later. He is now an established playwright in Chicago, a profession which
aligns him more closely with that of his future love than the novel’s television
writer. He does not have a terminal brain tumour like his literary counterpart,
but he is grappling with writer’s block and mourning a recent break-up. His
frustration and apathy are palpable and are conveyed through actor Reeve’s
curt tone and body language in place of the novel’s brittle prose. On impulse
he decides to take a road trip and winds up at the Grand Hotel.
The narrative incidents which follow are similar to those in Matheson’s
novel, albeit tweaked by the author-screenwriter and filmmakers for cinematic
effect. Collier discovers McKenna’s photograph in the hotel’s exhibit, illumi-
nated by a shaft of light for dramatic effect and accompanied by John Barry’s
lush musical score. Like his literary counterpart, Collier is instantly entranced.
His enchantment and obsession are depicted without dialogue or narration,
through short scenes of him contemplating McKenna at dinner, unable to
sleep, and returning to look at her picture in the middle of the night. As he
does in the novel, Collier visits town to research McKenna, and voiceover is
used here to convey key points of his research. However, where in the novel
Collier learns everything he knows about McKenna and time travel through
reading, in the film two new characters have been created to orally convey
some of that information to both Collier and the audience: Laura Roberts, a
friend of McKenna, provides further information about her, and Gerald
Finney, one of his former college professors, tells him about time travel. The
incidents leading up to Collier’s journey through time are also similar to the

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

novel: he purchases an old suit, secures old money, removes all accoutre-
ments of the present day from his hotel room, and encounters setbacks and
frustration and eventually success as he struggles to will himself back in time.
Director Szwarc consciously opted not to use special effects to depict
Collier’s journey through time (Bouzereau, 2000), despite working in the era
of such special effects and fantasy-driven juggernauts as Star Wars (1977),
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979),
and the Reeve-starring Superman (1978). Instead, his journey is depicted
through subtle adjustments to light and sound to keep it «[…] simple and
pure» (Szwarc, 2000), and the film subsequently uses Fuji stock for its period
scenes to differentiate them from scenes set in the present and filmed on
Kodak (Bradley, 2010: 223). Szwarc’s emphasis on purity is of some impor-
tance to the film’s overall conception, and will be returned to later.

Past

As indicated previously, the first section of Bid Time Return unfolds in

a diary-type format, with Collier typing or dictating onto cassette his impres-
sions and experiences. These observations and recollections start out short,
sharp and brittle, gradually becoming longer as his obsession for and research
into McKenna deepens. Once the novel shifts to 1896, this format changes.
The passages of prose constituting this section of the book are all considerably
longer, and from this point Bid Time Return adopts a more traditionally
novelis­tic style. This is explained by the fact that Collier has fewer chances to
record his recollections and must do so in long stretches of writing. The novel
also switches from its mingling of present and past tense in the modern sec-
tion to predominantly past tense in the period section, which is fitting given
that these passages of text are written in retrospective bouts. The switch to
past tense also thematically complements the fact that Collier is, indeed, in the
past. The overall effect of this, along with the more expansive prose, is that
the writing style becomes more fitting to the literary period of the novel’s ac-
tion (late 1800s). It also mirrors the intensification of Collier’s growing obsession
for McKenna, unlike the transient commentator of the earliest pages of the
book.
Once Collier reaches 1896, he soon meets McKenna outside Hotel de
Coronado. However, his courtship is impeded by McKenna’s mother and her
manager William Fawcett Robinson, who keep him at arm’s length believing
him to be an opportunist preying upon their young starlet. Collier perseveres

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 Ben Kooyman

against their wishes and McKenna’s own reservations, and gradually secures
her affections. Yet in the Matheson tradition of pitting hapless protagonists
against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, it is a far from painless process,
and the author dwells on the agonising awkwardness of their interactions and
the wheels and cogs of Collier’s mind turning as he grapples with courting a
woman from an alien era. These scenes are driven largely by dialogue and
Collier’s narration of his thought processes. The film closely follows the nov-
el’s trajectory of events, albeit with some differences: McKenna’s mother is
not present; McKenna is more forthcoming in her growing affection for Col-
lier; and dialogue, direction and performance adopt a lighter touch than their
angstier source material. Moreover, as the narrative is no longer limited to
Collier’s point of view, there are additional scenes between McKenna and
Robinson (played by Christopher Plummer) which deepen their relationship.
These scenes also, along with the aforementioned opening scene, contribute
to investing McKenna with greater personal agency, as does an improvised
monologue she delivers to Collier during a stage performance.
Earlier I noted the challenge that filmmakers face in translating Mathe-
son’s signature everymen characters to film, and this is often due to incongru-
ous casting choices. The three adaptations of Matheson’s novel I Am Legend
(1954) attest to this, with the everyman timbre of Robert Neville – the lone,
neurotic human survivor in a world populated by vampires – repeatedly un-
dermined by characterisation and casting: elder hams (Vincent Price in The
Last Man on Earth, 1964), superstars (Will Smith in I Am Legend, 2007), and el-
der ham superstars (Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, 1971) make for poor
everymen.6 However, the casting of Christopher Reeve, then fresh from his
star-making (and typecasting) role in Superman, works in Somewhere in Time’s
favour. The role of Collier appealed to Reeve because he was looking for «[…]
something very quiet, something very different» to follow Superman (Bou-
zereau, 2000). Yet the best quality Reeve brings to Collier is the same quality
he brought to Superman: his earnestness and sincerity. While Reeve became a
star because of Superman, his was not a particularly showy performance, espe-
cially compared to co-stars like Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty, and Margot Kid-
der. Rather, his sincerity anchors that film and it similarly grounds and makes
feasible the events of Somewhere in Time. He does not entirely persuade in
earlier scenes where he displays apathy, but fares a great deal better depicting

6  Matheson was particularly critical of Price’s casting in The Last Man on Earth, believing «Price was
totally wrong for it» (qtd. in Bradley, 2010: 122). One can only imagine what sort of Neville Arnold
Schwarzenegger would have made in Ridley Scott’s mooted film of I Am Legend in the 1990s (265).

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

a man in love. Some critics, blinded by his iconic turn as the Man of Steel,
were not convinced by his change of direction. Roger Ebert (1980), for in-
stance, felt Reeve was «[…] not particularly convincing in it. He seems a little
stolid, a little ungainly.» However, this ungainliness is appropriate to the
character. Collier is literally out of time and out of place. As Szwarc (2000)
observes, Reeve does not blend easily into the period setting like Christopher
Plummer, but rather resembles a «[…] bear in a China shop» in that environ-
ment. This highlights his disconnection from the setting, and even affords
Reeve, as he later noted, a chance to indulge some of his Clark Kent goofball
shtick as he adapts to his new environment (Bradley, 2010: 226).
In his lukewarm review, Ebert (1980) also compared Somewhere in Time
unfavourably to Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time (1979), a time travel film
about H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper in modern day San Francisco released
the previous year. In particular, Ebert criticised what he perceived as
Somewhere in Time’s lack of playfulness with its time travel gimmick. I would
disagree with Ebert on two counts. Firstly, Somewhere in Time is more closely
bound to romance genre conventions than Meyer’s headier blend of thriller,
romance, comedy and fantasy, and his unfavourable comparison is unfair on
that basis. Secondly, the film does indulge in some playfulness, much of it
based in comedy of errors. For example, when Collier first awakens in the
past, he finds himself in someone else’s hotel room in the thick of an argument
and must sneak out unnoticed in the tradition of drawing room farce. In
addition, the period wardrobe Collier selected in the future turns out to be
anachronistic by at least a decade, he cuts his face badly when attempting to
shave with a traditional razor for the first time (also a gag in the novel;
Matheson, 1980a: 214–215) and his attempts at speaking and acting old-
fashioned often miss the mark (and provide plum opportunities for Reeve to
indulge in his Clark Kent shtick). As Szwarc (2000) notes, «[w]herever
possible, we injected lightness into it» to offset the heavier dramatic content to
follow. These scenes exemplify this intent.
Matheson’s novel is more concerned with character than the politics
and logistics of time travel. He once observed: «Through the years I have been
able to get more and more into character, but I never went into stories based
on characters. I went into the stories based on a story idea. Then I put charac-
ters in the story that I hoped would be believable and realistic» (qtd. in Myers,
2011). This was also the case with Bid Time Return – the idea evolved from
seeing a picture of stage actress Maud Adams similar to the picture of McK-
enna that is central to the story (Bradley, 2010: 220). However, Collier and, to

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 Ben Kooyman

a lesser extent, McKenna are the focal points of the novel, just as Scott Carey
is The Shrinking Man’s focal point and Robert Neville is I Am Legend’s. Even so,
Matheson devotes some of the book to meditating on the possibilities of time
travel. He explores theory related to time travel early in the novel via Collier’s
research, and later has Collier muse on differences in conduct and culture
between eras. For example, a joke is made at the expense of the journalism of
the period – «The Wretched Sentenced to Six Years in Prison. There’s what I call
objective journalism» (Matheson, 1980a: 213) – and elsewhere he ponders
where the great figures of the era and near future are currently located:

Einstein is a teenager in Switzerland. Lenin is a young lawyer, his revolutionary

days far ahead of him. Franklin Roosevelt is a Groton student, Gandhi a lawyer
in Africa, Picasso a youth, Hitler and De Gaulle schoolboys. Queen Victoria still
sits on the throne of England. Teddy Roosevelt has yet to charge up San Juan
Hill. H.G. Wells has only recently published The Time Machine. McKinley has
been elected this very month. Henry James has just fled to Europe. John L.
Sullivan is newly retired from the ring. Crane and Dreiser and Norris are, only
now, beginning to evolve the realistic school of writing. And, even as I write
these words, in Vienna, Gustav Mahler is commencing his duties as conductor
of the Royal Opera (Matheson, 1980a: 187–188).

Somewhere in Time likewise concentrates on character but also entertains a

number of time travel possibilities, many invented specifically for the screen
story. These ideas and plot points are set up in the earlier contemporary-set
section of the story and pay off later in the period setting. For example, as
mentioned earlier, both McKenna and Collier listen to Rachmaninoff in the
present; as the film later reveals, it is Collier who introduces her to this par-
ticular melody – his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Op. 43, Variation XVIII)
– in the past when he whistles it during their time together. As also mentioned
earlier, the senior McKenna gives Collier a pocket watch in the present. Col-
lier, in turn, takes the pocket watch back through time with him and leaves it
in the past, enabling her to give it to him in the future. While the watch is also
present in the novel, it is simply a gift from McKenna in the past and is not
invested with any thematic or temporal significance. Also invested with
greater thematic and temporal significance in the film is McKenna’s photo-
graph. The film depicts the taking of this photograph in the past, and Collier
is present when it is taken. McKenna looks and smiles directly at him as it is
being taken, meaning that when he falls for this image in the future he is fal­
ling for a gaze intended specifically for him. Another invention of the film is

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

the character Arthur, whom Collier meets in the present as a senior member
of the Grand Hotel’s staff and encounters in the past as a child. Finally, where
in the novel it is a random modern penny which Collier discovers in his cloth-
ing that ruptures his connection to the past and propels him back to the pre-
sent, in the film it is Collier himself who secrets the anachronistic coin in his
outfit, which lends the tragedy of their separation a sardonic, self-defeating
quality. These setups and payoffs attest to the film’s moderate fascination
with the story’s time travel mechanics.

Back to the future

The discussion up until this point has focused on various creative

choices made in translating Bid Time Return to film. The rationales behind
these decisions – streamlining the narrative, finding cinematic equivalents or
alternatives for certain themes and scenes from the novel – are not unique to
this specific instance of adaptation. However, they are representative of
Matheson’s savvy and sophistication as an adapter of source material – wheth-
er his own or that of others, such as his adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe for
Roger Corman7 – and the insights which his dual professions as screenwriter
and novelist (as well as short story author) gave him into the strengths and
weaknesses of both mediums. In this final section, however, I turn to a funda-
mental deviation – in narrative, tone and ideology – of Somewhere in Time from
its source material, one which marks the film as a critical transformation of its
source text and an exemplar of infidelity as an asset in the realms of both ad-
aptation and adaptation discourse.
Of the two texts discussed here, Somewhere in Time is the more conven-
tional romantic drama. Where Bid Time Return’s neurotic narration provides
the book with an anchor of sorts, Somewhere in Time is a purer cut of romantic
melodrama, albeit a cut above a time-travelling Nicholas Sparks weepie. Still,
at several points throughout the novel Matheson’s neurotic narration gives
way to soppier sentiments, notably when Collier and McKenna are reunited
following a contrived separation. After spending a day bonding, Collier is
abducted during McKenna’s stage performance by thugs working for Robin-
son. He escapes and believes her gone, only for them to be reunited. They
proceed to reveal the depths of their feelings for each other, which is where

7  While Corman’s popular Poe films were often critically maligned on and after their release (e.g. Gifford,
1973: 190; Hutchinson & Pickard, 1983: 105), a number are considered classics today and are often in-
cluded in volumes celebrating the greatest horror films (e.g. Empire, 2000; Schneider, 2009).

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 Ben Kooyman

Matheson indulges his syrupy side. This syrupiness is prelude to a devastat-

ing blow, and indeed makes the blow all the more devastating when it ar-
rives, yet high reader tolerance is required for prose like «[h]er childlike
laughter so delighted me. I thought my heart would burst from happiness»
(Matheson, 1980a: 296). Suffice to say, Matheson is better suited to neurotic,
sardonic protagonists than love-struck, elated ones.
Even so, amidst these exchanges Matheson tempers the sentiment by
subtly foreshadowing the couple’s eventual permanent separation, with Mc-
Kenna repeatedly expressing anxiety that they will be torn apart. Collier and
McKenna also consummate their relationship multiple times, which is like-
wise ominous of events to come, at least for readers familiar with Matheson’s
work. Though he downplays its significance to his writing (Bradley, 2010:
180), sex is a recurring theme in Matheson’s literary work. Earthbound (1982)
and Hell House (1971) are notable examples, albeit heavily concerned with
sexual monstrosity, and both The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend feature lead
characters frustrated by the absence of sex in their lives and the impotence
borne by their situations (shrinking in the former’s case, lack of companion-
ship in the latter’s). While romantic rather than sexual love is the focus of Bid
Time Return, Collier’s sexual yearnings are hinted at throughout. For example,
when he watches McKenna perform barefoot on stage he excitedly thinks «[h]
er feet are bare! […] How can the sight of her feet excite me? I’ve seen women
at beaches, almost naked. Nothing. But those unclothed feet – her feet. It’s in-
credible» (Matheson, 1980a: 249). Yet like those works alluded to above, little
good stems from sexual desire or success.
After their night of passionate conversation and lovemaking, Collier
has an altercation with Robinson. Following that, the proverbial penny liter-
ally drops. Collier discovers the aforementioned anachronism in his suit and
is thrust violently back to the present day. As he bitterly muses, «[a] flipped
penny had brought me to San Diego in the first place. A penny had taken me
to her. A penny had taken me away» (Matheson, 1980a: 312). He laments,
«Elise was gone. I had found her but now she was lost. Done. What I had read
in those books [about her being heartbroken, growing old and dying alone]
was true. Done. None of them would be rewritten now» (311). Indeed, far
from being rewritten as he had hoped, what happens according to those his-
tory books will transpire precisely because of Collier, his courting of her, and
his violent separation from her, investing the tragedy with a cruel irony.
However, Bid Time Return creates ambiguity around whether Collier
even returned to the past or not. In regards to narrative logic, two key things

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

invalidate Collier’s reminiscences. Firstly, as indicated previously the sections

of the novel written in the past are longer and more elaborate than those com-
posed in the present; however, it is unfeasible that such lengthy passages
could be written in the short spaces of time available to the narrator. Second-
ly, once in the past the constantly introspective narrator does not at any point
contemplate the fact he has a brain tumour and, despite reaching McKenna,
will have little time with her. Indeed, at one point he muses «[…] one day,
when we have gotten old together, I will tell you how [Mahler’s] Ninth Sym-
phony helped bring us together» (Matheson, 1980a: 300). Implicit in this is the
possibility that his journey to the past is merely a hallucination or a psycho-
logical retreat, a mechanism of escape and denial. This idea is foreshadowed
in brother Robert Collier’s opening to the manuscript, and further substanti-
ated in his postscript, which elaborates in detail how Collier would have con-
structed the fantasy of his romance with McKenna.8 It is a cold splash of water
on the reader, following the cold splash that was Collier’s violent return to the
present. However, it is ultimately for the reader to decide whether to interpret
Collier’s journey to the past as delusion or genuine, and in doing so whether
they choose to invest in the fantastical or real scenario. Robert himself ex-
presses for his lost brother a kernel of hope that the events of the novel did
transpire: «[p]art of me wants very much to believe that it was not a delusion
at all. That Richard and Elise were together as he said they were. That, God
willing, they are, even now, together somewhere» (316).
In its final scenes, Somewhere in Time speaks to this romantic impulse.
The film posits that Collier really does go back in time to see McKenna, is
forced violently back to the present, and is reunited with her in the afterlife,
with no element of doubt, however obscure, generated. In doing so, the sub-
plot of Collier’s brain tumour is completely jettisoned, partly because, as
Szwarc has remarked, «[…] on film terminal illnesses do not do well» (Bou-
zereau, 2000). While the success of Love Story (1970) – a romantic film featur-
ing illness, death and separation, and one of the biggest commercial successes
of the previous decade – is at odds with Szwarc’s comment, this creative deci-
sion was nonetheless consistent with the Hollywood culture of the time, as
will be discussed shortly. In light of the film’s revised ending, the novel’s
framework as a manuscript with an opening and postscript by the narrator’s
brother is also abandoned. While films depicting manuscripts from the dis-

8  Those aforementioned instances of McKenna fearing their separation could also be interpreted, in
psychoanalytic terms, as Collier’s unconscious mind intruding on his fantasy and warning of its im-
pending collapse.

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 Ben Kooyman

tant or recent past being read in the present are common – see, for example,
romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and fantasy adventure
John Carter (2012) to name just two – this device can sometimes minimise the
impact and immediacy of the storytelling. It is precisely these qualities – im-
pact and immediacy – which first attracted Matheson to film and television.
According to the author, these mediums were attractive «[…] because of their
immediacy. I mean there’s nothing like reading a good book, but a film hits
you right in the face» (qtd. in Bradley, 2010: 4). While Bid Time Return’s inher-
ent textuality as an autobiographical record and fantastical construction is
central to its meaning, it is not, as the aforementioned popular clichés about
cinema noted by Hutcheon (2006: 56–67) suggest, necessarily suited to a me-
dium that thrives on action and exteriority. Moreover, translating the story to
film using the novel’s framework would have resulted in its events being
strictly bound to the perspective and fate of the manuscript’s author – hence
robbing McKenna of the moments of agency the film provides her – as would
its denouement. Instead, Matheson reinvents the novel’s denouement in a
way better suited to the story’s new medium.
In the film, the novel’s dialogue-heavy scenes and multiple sexual en-
counters between Collier and McKenna following their initial separation and
reunion are shaved down to one conversation – culminating in his return to
the past – and one sexual encounter before it, which is consistent with the
economical streamlining of certain events discussed previously.9 Their inter-
course transpires off-screen, glimpsed only briefly through lacy curtains. Di-
rector Szwarc (2000) believed that showing sex between Collier and McKenna
would «[…] take away the ethereal quality» of their romance and the «[…]
very idealistic view of love» that the film posits. Similarly, Reeve felt «[i]t
would have been in very poor taste» to depict their love scene (Bouzereau,
2000). This emphasis on romantic purity is somewhat at odds with Mathe-
son’s repeated use of sex as a narrative and thematic trope in his literary work
and reinforces that the film is of a tamer, more romantic stock than its source
novel.10
In Matheson’s novel McKenna is asleep when Collier is thrust back to
the future, but she is awake and they are conversing when it transpires in the
screen story. This choice invests the scene with greater dramatic effect than if

9  To this effect, it also jettisons the novel’s altercation between Collier and Robinson.
10  On a side note, the film preceded another science-fiction film about a man who travels through
time after falling in love with a woman’s photograph: James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984). While
Szwarc and Cameron’s films are wildly different aesthetically, both feature doomed but transcendental
romances.

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

Collier were alone. Moreover, where in the novel McKenna repeatedly ex-
presses concern that they will be separated, ensuring the spectre of potential
loss looms over the narrative, it is not foreshadowed in the film, making their
separation all the more abrupt and unsettling. Szwarc’s directorial choices
make their separation even more dramatic and jarring: the camera adopts
Collier’s point of view and pulls away from McKenna as she screams his
name repeatedly, pulling further and further away until the screen is pitch
black. Following his return to the present, Richard attempts to will himself
back to the past but is too emotional and exhausted. He loses his reason to live
and falls into a catatonic state, and then, as Reeve describes it, «[…] dies of a
broken heart» (Bouzereau, 2000).
It is at this point that Somewhere in Time deviates most significantly
from its source text. Liberated from the novel’s framing device, terminal ill-
ness subplot, and narrative ambiguity, the screen story embraces the romantic
impulse expressed in Robert Collier’s epitaph to his brother in the novel, de-
picting the lovers’ reunion in the afterlife. Like the scene described above, the
camera once again adopts a first person perspective, albeit this time of Col-
lier’s spirit. The spirit retreats from Collier’s lifeless body and moves towards
an otherworldly white light, where it is reunited with McKenna to the accom-
paniment of John Barry’s lush musical score. In his commentary Szwarc (2000)
describes this sequence as «[…] going into another dimension» (as Scott Carey
does in The Shrinking Man), yet the bright whiteness of the set conforms to
fairly widespread Christian conceptions of the afterlife.
Somewhere in Time may not be quite as syrupy as Bid Time Return‘s syr-
upiest prose, but due to this revised ending it is ultimately more convention-
ally romantic. In jettisoning Collier’s illness and the shadow of doubt it casts
over the narrative’s credibility, in perpetuating the purity and genuineness of
its lovers’ romantic union, and in depicting their reunion in a realm unshack-
led of the parameters of earth and time, the film perpetuates the romantic in-
clinations that Matheson’s novel ultimately and quite deliberately under-
mines. In light of this fundamental difference between novel and film, it could
be argued that the film undermines its source text. However, it is reductive
and reactionary to dismiss the ending as a betrayal or cheapening of the
source material. Rather, it is far more rewarding to look at these decisions as
constituting a transformation of the source text, a re-interpretation of it for a
different medium and climate. The film’s immediate cinematic context is es-
pecially revealing. As mentioned earlier, Somewhere in Time was produced in
the wake of fantastical juggernauts like Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third

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 Ben Kooyman

Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Superman. Its year of release also
marked the release of further colourful franchise-minded spectacles like The
Empire Strikes Back (1980), Flash Gordon (1980), and Superman 2 (1980), also
headlined by Reeve.11 Somewhere in Time is a more muted affair than any of
these films – and undoubtedly suffered financially for this – yet with its re-
vised happy ending and elimination of Collier’s illness it reflected the grow-
ing «[…] process of disengagement and retreat» in American cinema in the
aftermath of Star Wars, as noted by Peter Hines (1999: 59). The transition from
the politically-minded, auteur-driven American cinema of the 1970s to the
lightweight, populist American cinema of the 1980s is an oft-told tale (e.g.
Biskind, 1998), and its clichéd seams are evident: as Tom Shone (2004: 9)
points out, there were enough populist blockbusters in the early 1970s – like
Airport (1970), The Sting (1973), and The Towering Inferno (1974) – to undermine
the cliché of the auteur-driven American cinema that abruptly ended with the
arrival of Luke Skywalker. Nonetheless, the novel Bid Time Return’s ending –
where Collier is separated from McKenna, dies, and it is revealed his journey
through time and romance were merely hallucinatory – would not have been
out of place in the early-to-mid 1970s American cinema, given the tragic end-
ing of Love Story or the pessimistic endings of The Godfather Part II (1974), The
Parallax View (1974) and Network (1976), to name a few signature films from
the era. By 1980, however, this ending would have flown contrary to the
reigning cultural and cinematic tide, as studio politics surrounding the end-
ings of Blade Runner (1982) and Brazil (1985) within the next few years would
attest. Somewhere in Time’s denouement was thus consistent with the Holly-
wood culture of the time, and it is more rewarding and educational to regard
this denouement as an informed re-interpretation reflecting its cultural con-
text than simply as a commercially mercenary betrayal of the source text
(which, given the film’s disappointing box office, holds little weight).
Tweaking source texts to match the aesthetic strengths of cinema is a
storytelling necessity. The utopian notion of a definitive adaptation of a
book or short story on screen is naïve and does not take into consideration
the subjective thrust of the reading experience. Brian McFarlane (2007: 15)
rightly notes that «[…] every reading of a literary text is a highly individual
act of cognition and interpretation. » In other words, all readers digest and
imagine the same text in different ways, and because an adaptation is ulti-
mately a single reading of a text the idea of an authoritative adaptation of

11  Szwarc, as director of sequel Jaws 2 (1978) and spinoff Supergirl (1984), also contributed to this
bombastic franchise culture.

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 From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time

any work is misguided. As I have discussed at length elsewhere (Kooyman,

2013), the discourse surrounding film adaptations of literary works, both
within academia and in the popular consciousness, has long been hampered
by the equation of fidelity with successful adaptation and infidelity with un-
successful adaptation. Thomas Leitch (2008: 64) characterises the field of ad-
aptation studies especially as «[…] still haunted by the notion that adapta-
tions ought to be faithful to their ostensible sourcetexts.» Robert Stam (2005a:
14) advocates for «[…] mov[ing] beyond the moralistic and judgmental ideal
of fidelity», while Julie Sanders (2006: 20) suggests that often «[…] at the
very point of infidelity… the most creative acts of adaptation» can emerge.
To damn film adaptations of literary works for their digressions is reaction-
ary and reductive. To understand and illuminate a film adaptation’s digres-
sions in tone, ideology and narrative denouement via reference to its broad-
er cinematic context, and consequently to read an adaptation as a transformation
of its source, is far more valuable. Somewhere in Time attests to this. While it
is undoubtedly a more conventional romantic drama than Bid Time Return, it
also represents a successful adaptation of this source text once fidelity is
jettisoned as a criterion for success. The screen story adapts much of the
source faithfully, streamlines narrative incident where necessary, and finds
cinematic equivalents for aspects of the novel – its interiority of characteri-
sation, its inherent textuality – difficult to translate to screen. More impor-
tantly, it critically assesses the suitability of certain aspects of the novel –
specifically its denouement – for film and opts to re-interpret and transform
them. The film thus exemplifies Matheson’s savvy as adapter (as well as
director Szwarc’s) and reinforces that fidelity is not the crux of successful
adaptation.

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